Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Not to be a man, and to see others not to be a man.

On the channel of oil pipe blogger Loczniki official, "unpopular" has been the theme of their creation in recent months.

The characters in front of the camera have empty eyes, expressionless faces, stiff movements and strange tones. Although the theme and background of their videos are "everyday", coupled with the author's almost real acting skills, Loczniki and their series of "NPC imitation shows" have become one of the most popular content on overseas short video platforms some time ago.

Although most of their works are short videos within one minute, both YouTube and TikTok have attracted a large number of viewers and comments in a short period of time.

As the new Internet celebrity of TikTok, Loczniki has reached 2.2 million fans.

In Loczniki video shows, there are often two characters-the man who usually appears in the first person and the woman who plays NPC. Similar to games, the male host often shows only one pair of hands in the video, and the camera always rotates sharply with the line of sight:

The real bright spot in the video is the girl who has no emotional ups and downs, moves mechanically, and is always stuck by inexplicable obstacles without knowing it:

She never blinks, her tone is cold, she pauses in strange places, she always turns around, she never puts food in her mouth when she eats, and naturally she never opens her mouth:

In real life, this series of behaviors will seem out of place with the surroundings, but if you look at the virtual world, that is, in the game, I believe all players will understand such a picture, because she is so much like an emotional NPC.

In the game, NPC is a character that players can not directly control. In order to make these virtual characters appear more authentic, the program will often give them a set of established action logic, and will respond to certain preset situations accordingly.

But the program is dead in the end, and you never know what the player will do to a NPC and what kind of Bug the system will encounter, so when some "unplanned" situation occurs, the action of the NPC will be particularly abnormal, and the video author Loczniki, has captured this wonderful contrast and expressed it in a more everyday reality.

Although there is no coherent plot, these NPC imitations tend to follow certain themes, such as the "NPC dating" series, which was previously widely retweeted on Weibo and Douyin platforms, and the recently updated "NPC girlfriend quarrels Daily". In order to better fit the theme of "game NPC", the author also adds an optional dialogue option to the quarrel.

Choose "none of your business" and you will be mercilessly beaten by NPC.

On the short video platform, "imitating NPC" is not new, but they still get a lot of attention and retweets in a short time, which has a lot to do with their own dance basis and two-dimensional concentration.

Loczniki is a two-person group made up of Loczek Szymkowski and Nicole Szymkowski, a couple from Poland, and the ID "Loczniki" is made up of their names.

They were professional street dancers before imitating NPC was noticed, and these techniques just became the basis for imitating NPC's stiff movements because the usual practice, Popin (also often referred to as "mechanical dance"), emphasizes rhythm and muscle vibration.

When not shooting short videos, they are famous Polish street dancers.

In addition to hip-hop, the two are also veritable "second dimension". They have previously filmed live videos of restoring blood-filled OP and fighting scenes, and can always accurately capture the stalks and grooves of their imitators, which is also one of the reasons why they are out of the circle:

Warm-blooded op famous scene-the protagonist is doing meaningless running in place

In Loczniki's more out-of-circle NPC imitation series, there is another word that is often mentioned in the comments section, and that is "Valley of Horror":

The "Horror Valley effect" originally refers to the fact that robots are too similar to human beings, which makes human beings have a sense of fear, but this time the protagonist is a living person, but he is feared because the imitated NPC is too similar to human beings, which is also an affirmation of her degree of restoration.

As mentioned earlier, although "overreduction" can cause human fear, the behavior of "imitating NPC" has been around for a long time and is always popular with players.

Think of the "not very smart" NPC features of traditional games: empty-handed mime-like actions, stiff facial expressions, counter-common sense physics and mobile logic, and--

There will always be fancy crashing into the wall.

He will always have all kinds of Bug-like crashing into the wall.

Long before the Polish dancer's series of videos attracted attention, Jinnkid, an American tubing author pictured above, became famous for accurately restoring the appearance and behavior of NPC in Ancient Scrolls 5, and even got official recognition from the game, except for the same rigid movements and hollow eyes treated by special effects. One of the major features of this author is to restore NPC's "wall-crashing show" on various occasions and actions.

However, since Jinnkid killed his wife and her affair with a gun last October, the famous "Old Roll NPC" series is a regrettable digression.

Why is there always someone willing to learn NPC like "artificial mental retardation"? In addition to simple tricks, the motives, objects and situations of imitating NPC may also be very different.

In the past few months, due to the popularity of Loczniki videos related to "imitating NPC", many domestic video writers have also taken this as a topic, and this trend has even spread to other areas, such as in the real estate industry, in order to enable customers to truly experience "immersive house viewing" on the video platform, employees even dress up as intelligent assistants responsible for explanation:

It's hard to say whether it's smart or not, but at least it restores the stiff movements of NPC assistants.

In some cases, the object of human imitation is not only the rigid NPC, but also the NPC with Bug.

The bizarre pose in which everyone's arms are spread out above is not an act of confusion, it actually comes from the famous Bug-- "T pose" in the game.

At first, it was just that the characters in the game broke away from the action instructions and returned to the initial state because of some unexpected circumstances, which often meant that the system had malfunctioned. But over time, as more and more people encounter this Bug,T pose, it gradually becomes a derived cultural symbol that is spread by virus, and finally becomes an action that is not directly related to the game, or even has no meaning in itself.

You may see foreign students making this inexplicable move on campus, but it really doesn't have any special meaning, just as human beings can't explain why they always like to watch people play NPC.

There are also times when imitating NPC doesn't have to be limited to reality.

Elden Ring, a popular game released at the beginning of the year, may be invaded by players from other worlds due to the addition of "intrusion mode". According to the default rules of the game, the player invasion represents the beginning of a PVP. Whoever defeats the other side in the map first wins.

That's usually the case, but someone quickly came up with a new way to dress up as a NPC to confuse their opponents.

A foreign player once posted on the forum the whole process of camouflage NPC. In addition to wearing the same clothes as the game NPC, he also needs to hold high the torch, walk slowly, move like a real NPC, and maintain proper formation with others. As a result, the opponent was fooled, and after he could not find the target, he quit the game.

Even if you are in the game world and control virtual characters, it is also possible to imitate other NPC. This reminds me of the classic game performance art of the past: tracking NPC.

In order to create a sense of reality, some detail-oriented games specially design a complete action path and daily movements for NPC, so that these characters controlled by AI are learning human behavior all the time.

Now it seems that there is a reasonable explanation for the various confusing behaviors of NPC in the game. For example, frequent bumping into the wall is due to mistakes in the pre-set course of action; empty eyes are because developers do not have the extra resources and energy to optimize the expression system; and action is stiff because they only respond to preset options. these are all loopholes and flaws in "imitating humans".

Who would have thought that such defects would seem funny and funny to human beings? if NPC really awakens its self-consciousness one day, but sees that human beings are deliberately imitating these strange loopholes, they may fall into deeper contemplation.

This article is from the official account of Wechat: game Research Society (ID:yysaag).

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